Page 23 of River of Flames

"Buongiorno. I was about to wake you. You slept well?"

His accent seemed thicker this morning. I nodded. "Very well, and you?"

"Ah." He lifted a hand, wincing as he rubbed at the back of his neck. "It was perhaps not the best night I have passed, but I did sleep."

I grimaced. "I'm sorry." I knew I should have insisted he take the bed. He was easily twice the size of the couch.

"Do not apologize. I have no regrets. Now. You like eggs?"

I nodded. "Very much. It'll be a nice change from the spurgos Raheem brings every morning."

He laughed. "Not much of a breakfast."

"Depends on how many you eat," I said, grinning.

He filled two plates with eggs and thick slices of toast, and we ate in companionable silence. There was undeniably a thread of…something…pulled tight between us, an awareness, or a promise, something shared and unspoken. But for all that had happened—or not happened—the night before, Luca was surprisingly easy to be around. Once my plate was cleared, I found myself sorry to have to leave.

"To the dig site, then? Or back to the dorm?" he asked as we climbed into his little orange car.

"Oh, to the dorm, please," I said, remembering Vanessa's text. I wondered what she needed me to pick up. I assumed she'd left her laptop behind or something like that, but then why wouldn't she have just said so?

Luca pulled the car to a halt in front of the dorm and turned in his seat to face me. I dragged my bag into my lap, fidgeting with the strap, unsure what to say.

I finally settled on, "Thank you. I had a lovely time."

He leaned a little closer, and I held my breath, wondering if he was going to kiss me again, if it was appropriate for me to kiss him.

He lifted a hand, and my heart pounded in my chest, but instead of kissing me he only cupped my face, his thumb brushing lightly against my lower lip.

"I am glad that I met you, River Shih."

And then he pulled his hand away and I was climbing out of the car.

He waited until I was safely inside the dorm before driving away, and I watched through the window as the taillights faded in the distance. When there was nothing to see but the empty stretch of road, I gave my head a hard shake. I needed to focus. Vanessa and Raheem were at the dig site, which meant they had the results of the mass spec readout from the day before. They knew the date of the book, and Blanton had called in some experts, and I needed to get back to work, not spend the day mooning over a boy. Man, I corrected myself. There was nothing boyish about Luca.

Focus, dammit!

I jogged down the hallway and up the stairs, fishing my room key out of my pocket. I'd just grab whatever Vanessa had left behind and head out to the—

"'Bout time, unicorn. I was starting to think it might be faster if I walked."

The key fell from my hands and clattered noisily on the tile floor.

"Theo?"

He grinned, tucking one hand behind his head as he stretched out on my bed. "Oh, good, you do remember me then. I wasn't sure. You're not great at answering texts."

"But I—you—what are you doing here?"

I tried not to react to the way he looked on my bed. Theo had been on my bed a million times—watching cartoons together as kids, doing homework together in high school, the time in college he'd caught a mouse in my dorm room and I hadn't let him leave until I was sure there weren't any more. This was no different.

"Didn't you hear?" he said with a smirk. "I'm an expert. Well, Dr. Neath is, anyway, and I somehow talked him into letting me tag along. Not a lot of paleographers out there that can read Velartan."

"You can't read Velartan," I countered, still having trouble wrapping my head around the fact that he was here, right in front of me.

"No," he agreed, pushing himself off of my bed, which made it somehow easier to think. "But I know an awful lot about old books."

The implication of his words finally caught up with me. "Wait—so there was text in the book? It was handwritten?"

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